As useful as these fasteners are, they were creating a bottleneck for one Tier 1 automotive supplier. One of the company’s products required two different wave washers. Two assemblers were needed at one station to install the parts. This was costly and, even worse, often resulted in rejects.

To solve the problem, the manufacturer wanted to automate the process. However, due to their wavy design, these washers are not the easiest parts to feed in an automated assembly system. They tend to tangle and jam—a lesson the manufacturer learned the hard way. It had purchased a feeder that could not reliably deliver the parts without jamming. After several attempts to fix the problem, the feeder company threw in the towel. “The part cannot be fed,” the manufacturer’s engineers were told.

That’s when the company contacted Vibromatic Co. Inc. in Noblesville, IN, for help. Vibromatic’s engineering team worked very closely with the manufacturer to ensure the project would be successful. The goal was to have one of each washer ready for pickup on fairly close centerlines every 5 seconds.

The key to feeding wave washers is to avoid backing them up in a conventional inline track. Instead, a single washer is fed from the bowl and into a pocket nest so a robot can pick only one part as needed. Two opposing rotation bowls are mounted on a common plate so that the part nests are on the correct centers for pickup.

After a successful acceptance run off at Vibromatic, the manufacturer took delivery and installed the feeder system on the line. It has been running automatically in production for more than three years without issue.

After this positive experience, the manufacturer has since made Vibromatic its preferred vendor for parts handling equipment.

For more information on parts feeding equipment, call Vibromatic at 317-773-3885 or visit www.vibromatic.net.